I love this poem by Danna Faulds that beautifully reminds us how the devotion to our Artistic practice can bear gifts unseen, discoveries unexpected and so much more. It reminds us that the riches lie in the process, not the product.

• APPROXIMATE DURATION: 10 minutes

• USE THIS FOR: Any tools, supplies, or spaces – as well as yourself.

•  BEWARE OF: Cultural appropriation. This type of cleansing ritual and the plants used to perform it are considered sacred medicine to Native American / Indigenous Nations. If you are not native, please be respectful and aim to fully understand the history of this practice and its significance before you incorporate it into your routine. Avoid purchasing smudge sticks from mass retailers, and choose instead to support Indigenous-owned businesses.

The Sound Method

Many spiritual practitioners believe that sound vibration is among the quickest and most effective ways to cleanse energy from a space, an object, or a person. Moreover, the right frequency doesn’t just purify but also restores the energetic harmony naturally occurring in the physical matter.

Because sound penetrates molecular structure so effectively, this method is handy for cleansing large, dense items like canvases, easels, and your art table.

• HOW TO DO IT: You can play recorded music. However, the energy of sound waves is most potent when the sound is created in the presence of the items being cleansed.

You can use various instruments, from singing bowls to bells, chimes, a tuning fork, a piano, a violin, a flute, or even your own voice chanting a mantra.

Visualize the sound as it cascades over your supplies and then expands outward to encompass the space you’re in. Imagine all the objects around you releasing old, stagnant energy. Let those vibrations be carried off on the sound waves.

• APPROXIMAGE DURATION:  10 minutes.

• USE THIS FOR: Any tools, supplies, or spaces – as well as yourself.

• BEWARE OF: The instruments’ quality, especially if you’re using something like a singing bowl or a tuning fork, where the sound emanates for some time and then gradually fades. Poor quality instruments resonate with a dull, metallic hum and are less effective at cleansing your tools.

• BEWARE OF: Choosing to set your items outside. Placing your supplies in contact with the earth adds power to the cleansing ritual, but you’ll want to make sure your items won’t be disturbed by wildlife or a random passerby. You’ll also want to be certain that morning dew or unexpected weather formations won’t ruin your supplies.

The Essential Oil Method

The use of essential oils has risen dramatically in the past few years. Not only can oils help with a wide variety of psychological and physical ailments, but many oils also have exceptional cleansing and purifying properties.

Scents such as white sage, cedarwood, citrus, peppermint, frankincense, and juniper berry are best for this type of energy cleansing.

• HOW TO DO IT: Although you can use oils in various ways, I prefer diffusing the scent throughout my studio. I set up a diffuser next to my easel, so the mist can permeate any art supplies I’m using for that particular piece. You can also move the diffuser around your space so the mist can reach multiple areas.To do this, you’ll need a diffuser (these come in various sizes and price ranges), a few drops of essential oil, and water.If you don’t have a diffuser, a great alternative is creating a DIY essential oil spray to spritz around your studio. I recommend searching online to find the right mix of ingredients.

• APPROXIMAGE DURATION: A few hours at a time.

• USE THIS FOR: Your studio space.

• BEWARE OF: The quality of the oil. As with all other ingredients you bring into your home, you’ll want to consider investing a little more in the purest options. Not all oils are created equal. You’ll also want to check warning labels. Some oils aren’t suitable for pets or young children.

The Rice Method

This is an excellent method for pulling out unwanted energy and withdrawing it in a safe and contained way.

• HOW TO DO IT: Grab a large bowl — preferably transparent — and fill it, about halfway, with rice. I prefer brown rice, but any type of rice will do. (Some of my clients have told me white rice feels energetically lighter to them and that they’ve had better results after using it in a cleansing ritual. So follow your intuition on this one.) Bury your items in the rice and let the bowl sit for 24 hours. Retrieve your items and then dispose of the rice as it now contains the unwanted energy from your supplies.

• APPROXIMAGE DURATION: one complete 24-hour cycle.

• USE THIS FOR: Small art supplies and spiritual tools.

• BEWARE OF: Using rice that’s been genetically modified (GMO).GMO foods have had their energy altered and won’t be as capable of removing negative energetic vibrations from your items. If possible, I recommend using rice that’s closest to its natural state, farmed sustainably, and ethically sourced.

The Breathwork Method

Your breath can be a terrific cleansing method. Like moonlight, it’s quick, easy, and available no matter where you are.

• HOW TO DO IT: Hold the item in your dominant hand. Focus your intention on cleansing stagnant, heavy, and negative energy. While you’re doing that, take a deep breath through your nostrils until you fill your lungs. Then, bring the item close to your face and release short, powerful gusts through the nose directly onto whatever it is you’re holding.

• APPROXIMAGE DURATION: 30 seconds per item.

• USE THIS FOR: Small art supplies and spiritual tools.

The more often you use your art supplies, the more energy they’ll collect. A solid guideline to follow is to clear your space and items once a month. However, if something feels heavier than usual, or if your own energy responds negatively to a specific tool, go ahead and cleanse it. There’s no need to wait any particular length of time between energy clearings.

This month I’m so very excited to bring you the work and story of Hilma af Klint. This artist was not one I learned about in Art School, in fact she only very recently came onto my radar – ironically, when I went to research another master artist – Wassily Kandinsky.

Ironic because Kandinsky crowned himself the first purely Abstract artist back in 1911 when one of his watercolor paintings was exhibited in Munich. Little did Kandinsky know that years earlier in 1906, a young Swedish artist began privately creating large, purely abstract paintings. The likes of which the modern world would not see on display until 1986 in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art! Hilma af Klint’s abstract works predate Kandinsky and have caused quite a stir among the Art Historians and academics alike! How could I resist not looking deeper into this tale?

So while I was going to first teach about Kandinsky this month, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to shine light on this incredibly inspiring woman artist! Kandinsky will have to wait. She was also a part of the Spiritualist movement so she fits perfectly into our theme.

(One word of advice when looking at her artwork, let your soul see it, don’t just use your eyes and your mind. Look at her work with your heart. You may be surprised at how a thread of recognition is found. Your mind may not be able to categorize or understand some of her art but your soul knows that not all need be named.)

Let’s learn more about her…

OVERVIEW – Hilma af Klint was born October 26, 1862 – and passed on October 21, 1944. She was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings were the first Western abstract art known to the current art community. A considerable body of her abstract work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky. She belonged to a group called “The Five”, a circle of women inspired by Theosophy who shared a belief in the importance of trying to contact the so-called “High Masters”—often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.

Hilma af Klint was born in 1862, in Solna, Sweden, as the fourth of five children of a Protestant couple, Mathilda af Klint and Victor af Klint who was an admiral and a mathematician. Most of her childhood was spent in Karlberg castle, the naval academy where her father was based. During the summer, the family would move to Hanmora, in Adelso, an island in Lake Malaren, where Hilma’s fascination with nature and organic life began.

Little else is known about af Klint’s childhood and her relationships with family and friends. It is known that she was close to her mother and lived with her not only in childhood but also after her father died in 1898, until her mother’s own death in 1920. It seems that she was devoted to her work (both her art and her studies) and to her immediate family. One may speculate that there was no time for romance or too much excitement when following a life of devotion as serious as that of af Klint’s. However, this is an artist who kept 1,000 paintings secret for a very long time so one cannot help but wonder what else the world does not know about af Klint; her mystery has become her allure.

Summer Landscape, 1888

After graduating with honors, she was awarded a scholarship in the form of an art studio in Stockholm’s artist quarter, where her landscapes and portraits quickly became the source of her financial independence and stability. Luckily, the Scandinavian education system already admitted both men and women to their Academies (unlike France and Germany) and it was not uncommon for women to make a living from their art. It was, of course, more unusual for women to become visionaries and to surpass the talents of their male contemporaries.

In 1896, with four female artist friends, af Klint established The Five (de Fem). The group conducted séances every week until 1906, experimenting with free-flowing writing and drawing, and with other spontaneous, unplanned ways of creating which aimed to allow for a more intuitive and direct way of making art. They opened each meeting with a prayer, followed by a meditation, a Christian sermon, and a review and analysis of a text from the New Testament. This would be followed by a séance. They recorded in a book a completely new system of mystical thought, in the form of messages from higher spirits called The High Masters. One of these Spirit guides, Gregor, announced, “All the knowledge that is not of the senses, not of the intellect, not of the heart but is the property that exclusively belongs to the deepest aspect of your being…the knowledge of your spirit”.

Critic Kate Kellaway, explains that these experiences “predated the surrealists by decades”, who were known to acquire much of their ideas and inspiration through a spiritual process.

In this way, privately and secretly, Hilma turned to unearthing, and furthermore understanding the unconscious as her motivation to make art. Paradoxically but also most appropriately, these abstract pursuits were rooted in a desire to understand the visible world around her in profound detail.

botanical study 2

Indeed, she also began to study plants especially from works conducted by the Swedish botanist Linnaeus, and animals, having worked as a draughtsman for a veterinary institute in 1900. Simultaneously, her profound fascination with the invisible world continued (an interest which was echoed by scientific discoveries of the day with the invention of the X-ray machine, electromagnetic waves, and telegraphy) as well as her affinity with spiritual theories being developed across Europe, especially Theosophy, founded by the Russian philosopher, Madame Blavatsky, and Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy was a spiritual movement developed by the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, which aimed to define a ‘spiritual science’, deeply rooted in Steiner’s ideas that spirituality could be rationally understood through both science and art.

Af Klint, who was small in height, with blue eyes, usually wore black and was vegetarian, was profoundly changed following an otherworldly experience in 1904. During a séance, she heard a voice telling her to make paintings ‘on an astral plane’ in order to ‘proclaim a new philosophy of life’. This was essentially a celestial commission, “from an entity named Amaliel who told her to paint the ‘immortal aspects of man”. Henceforth, from 1906 at age 44, af Klint embarked on her most prolific phase of abstract painting. Culminating in 1915, she had produced 193 works, each of which belonged to one of six series all over-arched by the larger body called Paintings for the Temple. She refers to this intensely creative period and process as being guided by a ‘force’, driven by a ‘higher power’ in a sort of ‘divine dictation’.

Three pieces from The Primordial Chaos Series 1906

This continuous creative process was only interrupted between 1908 and 1912, during which time she studied widely and took constant care of her mother, who had recently become blind. At some point during 1908, af Klint invited Rudolf Steiner, who was lecturing in Stockholm, to see her work hoping that he would be impressed (for she in turn was a great admirer of his writing).

Although perhaps momentarily deterred, Steiner’s discouragement did not last long and from 1912 onwards Hilma continued to paint the temple series with augmented vigor, always maintaining her public persona of being a landscape artist and keeping her more significant personal work a secret. Faultlessly maintaining the act of conventionality, in 1914 (at the absolute height of her artistic experiments), one of her traditional landscape paintings featured in a Baltic collective exhibition in Malmö, Sweden, the same exhibition where Kandinsky showed five recently painted early abstracts.

The Ten Largest (Paintings for the Temple Series)

After 1915, once the Paintings for the Temple had been completed, af Klint recorded that her ‘divine guidance’ had come to an end. In turn, the artist’s approach to painting, mainly according to size and medium, changed. Firstly her oil paintings on canvas became smaller (as had been previously in her Primordial Chaos series) and then she began to experiment with watercolor on paper, returning to a more “automatic” process adopted in early meetings with ‘The Five’. During 1917 she wrote over 1,200 pages entitled (Studies of the Life of the Soul), detailing her experience as a metaphysical medium.

Her mother died in 1920, and subsequently she began another highly creative year, predominantly exploring world religions and studying the scientific intricacies of flowers and trees. She moved to Helsingborg, a coastal city in Southern Sweden, and between 1921 and 1930 often visited the Goetheanum in Switzerland (the world center for the Anthroposophy Movement), joining the Anthroposophy society, meeting Rudolf Steiner again, and becoming deeply immersed in his theories and ideas. During this time, af Klint was highly concerned with the legacy of her own work, cataloguing and photographing her paintings, documenting her practice, writing in her journals and sketchbooks, and reviewing previous discoveries. At an old age, she insightfully understood that her works would not be appreciated by the audience of her time, so she left all of her creations to her nephew, stipulating in her will that they should only be made public twenty years after her death. When she died in 1944, almost 82 years old, none of her abstract works had ever been shown to the public.

Swan No. 1 1914-1915

Hilma af Klint did not have any contact with the modern movements of her time, yet she is now generally considered (whether useful or not) to be the pioneer and inventor of abstract art – her first abstract work was painted in 1906, which pre-dates Kandisnky’s by five years. Because of this new understanding, according to art critic Mark Hudson, she has “become one of the great unlikely buzz-figures of our time”. This delayed appreciation is due in part to her own wishes, which only made her works, comprising over 1,200 paintings, 100 texts, and 26,000 pages of notes and sketches, available to the public decades after her death.

One of her paintings was shown in 1986, in a collective exhibition in Los Angeles entitled The Spiritual in Art, yet her work only began to become more widely acclaimed after 2013, when the Modern Museum in Stockholm hosted an exhibition dedicated solely to her work. The lull in time before her ‘discovery’ is also due to the fact that af Klint did not participate in any form of self-promotion and thus the stamp of legitimacy from the art world took a long time to find her.

As explained by the Stockholm Moderna Museet exhibition catalogue (2013), af Klint’s “abstract pioneer spirit is not crucial when we now encounter her work on a larger scale”. It is the underlying spirituality, the main source of inspiration and creativity in all her work that defines her artistic contribution to the world. Now, she is generally considered a ‘woman ahead of her time’, a mystical painter, and a ‘cartographer of the spirit’, an expression coined by art critic Kate Kellaway. All of her works belong to the Hilma af Klint Foundation and the impact of her creation is only now coming to be understood. As a human able to renounce the ego at a time in history when building a cult of personality was often a key to success, a full appreciation of af Klint’s work involves following a path of intuitive intelligence which many viewers find challenging.

Although we remain far away from the entirely harmonious world that af Klint was working towards, it seems that it is within small collaborative groups where this ideal model can be successfully rehearsed. Furthermore, there are other contemporary artists currently making powerful artwork shared and critiqued principally by other artists rather than by critics and gallerists. This is an individual decision based on the realization that self-promotion can be a distraction when the goal is to facilitate true meaning. Af Klint assures young artists that ‘hiding’ one’s work does not mean that it is not still ‘seen’. Seventy years after her death, Hilma af Klint’s moment has come.

Hilma af Klint’s imagery is full of symbols, letters and words. Symbols are like doors into another dimension. For Hilma af Klint, her entire work was about conveying the messages she received, and to shed light on the great existential issues.

It would be pointless to translate the symbols and letters in Hilma af Klint’s works into definite, unambiguous terms. They must always be seen in relation to the entire context. In her notebook (Notes on Letters and Words pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint) she attempts to clarify the complex meanings of the various signs.

Here are a few general explanations:

• The snail or spiral represents development or evolution.
  Blue and yellow, and the lily and the rose represent femininity and masculinity respectively.
• Green is union of feminine and masculine (blue and yellow make green)
• W stands for matter, while U stands for spirit.
• The almond shape arising when two circles overlap is called the vesica piscis and is an ancient symbol for unity and completion.
• The swan represents the ethereal in many mythologies and religions and stands for completion in the alchemical tradition.
• In Christianity, the dove represents the holy spirit and love.

Here’s a Pinterest board full of her work to inspire you!

I highly recommend you watch this wonderful documentary about Hilma af Klint – so fascinating!